£100 for a casual lunch out for 4 is too much

[GrealishGoddess]

Deeply middle class problem but. Anyone else noticed that you can no longer get out of the likes of Bill’s, Wagamama, Pizza Express, etc , with two teens, for less than £100. Is this just inflation, NI effects, price gouging, what? AIBU to stay home?

Yep! It’s a long running joke amongst friends I should have shares in Wetherspoons I’m in there so often, but it’s so cheap!

I need my own pizza. I’m severely allergic to tomato so no sauce or anything near it, and cut with different knives etc. Other people won’t eat my pizza because it tastes “weird”.

You’re not unreasonable no - but it’s just the inflationary pressures added by supply chain (including wages/ fuel), energy on sites (more than trebled and was likely already thousands per month before), then wages.

wages have a huge impact, and despite where prices you’re seeing, these chains are also barely making any more - most verging on bankruptacy.

Pizza Wednesday at Wetherspoons - had a lovely Ham & Mushroom pizza with aLimonxello Spritz included (other drink options were available) for £8:49, was lovely

I had a 3 course pub Sunday lunch in Malta for €15 yesterday. All home cooked. Soup and bread, roast beef main course with vegetables and Yorkshire pudding and apple pie and ice cream. It would have cost a lot more at home.

Pizza Express often do good discounts if you have the app (like 2 main courses for price of 1)

While on holiday in France I noticed meals out were cheaper and also seemed better quality. Cooked from scratch, real flavour.

In a lot of places in UK it feels like food has been assembled from lots of pre bought in stuff. Pasta is rarely home made even in fancy places. The exceptions are a few local non-chain places run by people with genuine cooking talent who are experts in their cooking styles.

Yes, but that’s the “insane profits” thing, it’s over and above the usual profit element.

The 30/70 is for restaurants with staff, rent and all the other associated costs of a bricks-and-mortar business. It doesn’t explain why places are serving dishes where the ingredients are way below 30% of the menu price. Of course, a lot of places get their food from the likes of Brakes and just heat it up, and I suspect that’s where a lot of the additional cost comes in. But then they’re saving on paying for experienced cooking staff…

I went to Devon this weekend and paid £21 for a crab sandwich with crisps and salad, and a coffee.

It was delicious and I enjoyed it, but I regard going out to eat anywhere as a treat these days. It's just how things are now. Having said that, the cafe was very crowded.

In the six week school holidays, in England, I've eaten out twice - one crab sandwich, and a salad & a glass of wine one evening in a pub.

I doubt I'll eat out again until Christmas.

.I don't know if it should be a luxury. Lots of research about how experiences are better for our wellbeing than buying stuff

But agree it used yobe an occasional treat. As a child, I remember going out for birthday meals and when my grandparents visited, but not eating out for the sake of it. And when we did go out, we were only allowed to drink water

Exactly!

It is soo much cheaper to buy the most expensive M&S or Waitrose food, even ready made Sushi or easy to try fillet steaks with a bottle of wine!

At these ridiculous restaurant prices, it’s just not worth it anymore imo.

Totally agree. We used to be able to eat out once a week no problem but between cost of living, DS now eating adult meals, and reduced income due to ill health, it's now a rare treat.

Parents and sister (no dependants) are always asking to meet for a meal out, and we usually have to decline, reminding them that it's just too expensive for 4 of us.

It's not up to you to decide whst other people should eat🙄

4 x 11" pizzas and 4 wines in Wetherspoons, £42. Try it, you might be surprised.

I don't know if it should be a luxury.

Whether or not it was, it’s long since become quite normal to eat out regularly and the hospitality industry has grown to accommodate that. When I was a child we ate out fairly regularly but it wasn’t the norm for most, but then the high streets weren’t full of restaurants and cafes back then either. It was mostly shops.

If people are cutting back because they can’t afford it, the industry will shrink which is what we’re seeing.

4 people can’t have lunch at our local coffee shop for less than £100 . I just suck it up , prices are up everywhere.

Anything you can do yourself but chose to pay someone else is a luxury is it not?

There is a very cheap pub near us. It has Wetherspoon's prices. So you can have a decent lunch or dinner and if you go with the offer it’s a tenner a head including a pint, glass of house wine or a soft drink. At lunchtime they have an offer of 2 meals from the a very limited selection at £14.00 .We are up North and not in an expensive area like Harrogate or York.

My local favourite cafe has home cooked Chinese or English food that’s about £13 to £15 a head. I know the owner and it is all fresh. A few miles away is a cafe that does a cream tea for £12 a head.

Prices have gone up but you are also going to chain restaurants which have always been the worst food option.

We now avoid chains for this reason. Local restaurants are not cheaper but the quality is much better.

This is MN. Everything with so much as a mention of food is turned into a orthorectic bunfight on who eats the least/“best”. Thank you lucky stars we haven’t yet had the UPF lecture.

Buying food out became incredibly cheap leading to a level of eating out/takeaways that I couldn’t have imagined as a child. Partly prices have been kept down due to the hospitality industry being very poorly paid for most staff with wages remaining low when other industries were rising. Fuel and food prices are less easily controlled than staff costs. Menus can be tweaked a bit to use cheaper foodstuffs, less fuel but only up to a point.

I think we have benefitted from hospitality wages staying low whilst others have risen combined with food going through a long period of being artificially cheap - in the UK people expect to spend less on food that other Europeans. Now that pattern is shifting. Fewer meals out but with better paid staff could be a good thing.

It’s inflation. Inflation has been way out of step with people’s salary increases in recent years.

I dont understand what you mean? As long as tbe prices of the items were displayed, it is your choice to eat them or not.

OP is saying how expensive it is to eat out now compared to a few years ago.

@Mondaytuesdayhappydays

no, the average boy/man wouldn’t be “starving” after a Pizza Express pizza. If they are they have a problem - maybe worms, or maybe just greed/gluttony.

Or maybe you’re talking nonsense and have a disordered eating issue? You’re also passing this to your children, clearly.

Based on the majority on this thread.